Computer science graduates at the University of Colorado are recruited for summer internships up to nine months in advance and typically choose among five to 10 job offers upon graduation, enjoying average starting salary offers of $70,000, said Ken Anderson, associate chairman of the department.

The demand for computer science graduates is exceptionally high in this college town known for tech start-ups -- prompting the university to launch a second computer science degree program, one that will be housed in the College of Arts and Sciences and tailored for liberal arts students.

"Any discipline in arts and sciences can benefit from computational skills," Anderson said. "It's the new literacy requirement for the 21st century."

Tayor Graham, a sophomore in computer science, listens to a lecture in associate professor John Black's data structure class at the University of Colorado on Friday. The demand for computer science graduates is high in the Boulder area.
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MARK LEFFINGWELL
)

The CU Board of Regents will consider the new degree proposal Wednesday at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. If approved, CU could begin offering the program as soon as next fall.

Now, the computer science program that is growing at a steady pace is housed in the College of Engineering and Applied Science. Anderson said 340 students are enrolled in the bachelor of science program, up from 280 last year.

The proposed program would offer a bachelor of arts in computer science to suit students who, for example, are majoring in geography but want the skill set to develop map databases or who are studying speech, language and hearing and could benefit from building voice-recognition software.

If approved, arts and sciences students would be able to double-major to combine a liberal arts degree program with the BA degree in computer science. The computer science curriculum would still be taught by engineering faculty members.

Over the past seven years, the computer science department has seen 125 students transfer from the arts and sciences college to engineering, but the transfer process is difficult.

Last spring, all 47 computer science graduates reported having jobs lined up by graduation, Anderson said. The availability of tech jobs is at a historic high, making a more-than-full recovery from the dot-com bust of 2001. Anderson said employers begin calling him during the first week of fall classes to recruit summer interns.

"The demand is unbelievable," Anderson said. "They're snapping up our undergraduates for internships and hiring them upon graduation. To begin to meet that demand, we need to double the number of graduates we have."

CU projects that the new degree program would enroll 30 students in its inaugural year, growing to 160 students by its sixth year.

In its first year, CU officials expect the new degree program would bring in $400,000 in revenue and cost $272,000. By the fifth year, the estimates increase to about $2 million in revenue every year, with a cost of about $1 million to operate.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projected in 2007 that computer science jobs would be responsible for nearly 60 percent of all job growth in science and engineering fields between 2008 and 2018.

Steven Leigh, dean of CU's College of Arts and Sciences, said the university -- if it approves the BA in computer science -- will be ahead of the curve nationally.

Some universities -- including the University of California's Berkeley and San Diego campuses, the University of Virginia and Ohio State -- now offer both BS and BA degrees in computer science.

Leigh, whose own research focuses on human and primate evolution, said the degree program has exciting potential for various liberal arts fields. In his own field, he imagines the potential of anthropology graduates to design software that can create imaging of Neanderthal skulls, for example.

"I think this degree program has potential to profoundly change many of our disciplines," Leigh said.

He added that by making investments in this kind of a program, it will help CU recruit highly talented students from Colorado and out-of-state and keep them in the state upon graduation to fill high-tech jobs. Leigh said the university plans to offer scholarship packages for the program to give it a competitive edge.

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